Wieze Production

Dear valued customer,

June 29, 2022, saw one of the extremely rare moments in Callebaut’s history since 1911 when production was halted at the Barry Callebaut Wieze site (Belgium) after Salmonella was detected by the internal QA in a chocolate production lot.

The root cause could quickly be allocated to a lecithin batch supplied to Wieze. Thanks to the rigorous and proactive food safety procedures at Barry Callebaut, no contaminated chocolate reached the market. Barry Callebaut duly and proactively informed the Belgian Food Safety Authorities (FAVV-AFSCA) and remains in continuous collaboration with them on this incident. All impacted production equipment and the environment have been cleaned and the factory is operational again.

Even though no Callebaut branded products have been impacted by the contamination, also Callebaut’s Finest Belgian Chocolate production on the Wieze site has been suspended for the past weeks.

We keep our Callebaut customers and transparency closely at heart. Informing you and helping you out with chocolate deliveries to keep your business up and running in the best possible way, is our first priority. So what is the status?

  1. All Callebaut products delivered to you, and to be delivered, are of high quality and absolutely 100% food-safe.
     
  2. We may face low stocks and out of stocks for certain Callebaut products – mainly our Finest Belgian Chocolate range - in the next few weeks and months.

We want to emphasise that we very much value our business relationship with you, and that we do our utmost to continue this relationship as we have done until now.

To all of us, the motto of our founding father matters more than ever: being always in pursuit of better – even in case of an unusual and unforeseeable event beyond our control like this. In that spirit, we are aiming to offer you solutions that keep you going and we are looking forward to being back in business-as-usual.

Yours truthfully,

The Callebaut team